Taking 'Sides' with Larson Home Services

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Eight O six thirteen ten double U, I B A
and Ask the Experts brought to you this morning by
Larsen Home Services Online Larsen Home Services dot com. That's
l A R S O N Home Services dot com.
Tell for number six oh eight five three five forty
three forty three. That's forty three forty three. That's six

(00:21):
oh eight five three five forty three forty three. And
joined this morning by Andrew Larson from Larist Home Services. Andrew,
how you doing this week?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
You know, I'm always good. We're gonna be.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Talking you and I I for folks that don't know
you do, uh, you do have a very uh, very
upbeat look on things for good reason. I mean, we
talk about the works you guys do at Larson and
what a what a rewarding career and job it is,
and the opportunity to get to really help people, and
we're talking about something that unless something's changed, I don't

(00:53):
know that you guys. You guys do siting at Larsen
Home Services, but you got a question about them, didn't you.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Well, look, this is called it's a show.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Called Ask the Experts, right, so.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
You can ask anything you want and it's what we
talk about on the Home Services Home Show. Our podcast
is Bring On Questions, Any Questions, Me and my counterpart,
Josh Keeney. We've got I don't know, forty five years
of construction experience, and if we don't know the answer,
we'll find it out. But I got an email from

(01:26):
someone who listens. I don't know if it was from
the podcast or from from the radio show, but there's
just so many avenues to get a hold of me.
It's hard to keep track of Sean kidding, but they're asking.
They're one about side and they wanted to reside their house,
and it came with you know, they're talking about redoing
soft and fatia and the gutters, which is stuff that

(01:47):
we do. We don't do siding yet. We'll just leave
that there, but no, we don't do siding. But they
were wondering what type of siding is best? And well,
that is such a loaded question. What type of siding
is best? There are so many different types of siding.
I couldn't begin to even go through them all. You've

(02:10):
got steel siding, aluminum siding, you've got seamless steel siding,
you've got vinyl siding, and then within the vinyl siding class.
There's probably twenty different grades of vinyl siding, meaning best
to worst. You've got a lot of what's really taken
over in the past twenty years and become a lot

(02:30):
more relevant is fiber cement siding. You've got el brands
like LP smart siding, and there's a few different kinds
and those are those are made in factories. They're they're
very very hard siding, so they don't wick up a
lot of water. They come prepainted or pre primed, and

(02:51):
all your steel and vinyl, all those sidings come prepainted.
Now you can go back to old school cedar siding
or cedar shakes siding anyway, it's endless. But what is
most common right now are fiber cement sidings and vital sidings,
and I will run through a few pros and cons
of each. You know, steel and aluminum siding used to
be super popular, and seamless steel siding where they came

(03:14):
out with a machine kind of like a gutter machine,
like a gutter shutter machine, and ran it out seamless.
Now that's cool and all, and you don't have any seams,
But as far as like functionability, the seamless aspect to
a siding isn't like the seamless aspect to a gutter.
A gutter, we want the gutter to be seamless so

(03:36):
it doesn't leak. Right everywhere you've got a seam, you've
got sealant, and it leaks. With seamless seamless siding, it
doesn't really matter. You just get a more quote unquote
seamless look. Although with most sidings it's pretty hard to
see the seams anyway, so I think that's become a
lot less popular. The other thing with any sort of

(03:57):
metal siding is it dentse It can dent pretty easily.
I mean, if you're a great lawnmower, like like I am,
the chances of shooting a rock at your house or
slim to none because I've never done that before. But
you put a dent in that metal siding, like, it's
not just something you can easily fit and fix. There's
not a lot of dentless siding repair people out there,

(04:19):
so I guess I tend to lean towards, depending on
what your budget is, vinyl, which a lot of people
will be like, really you like vinyl? I do? I
like vinyl siding a lot. And here's why, it's relatively
inexpensive when as far as a good product. Now, again
there's a lot of different grades' yep, what was that.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
No, that's exactly what I was going to ask. I
think I was going to say, Andrew. I think one
of the reasons why people are are shocked to hear
vinyl is a lot of folks experience with vinyl is
that builder grade stuff, and they're going, why would you ever?
And there's a difference between.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
There's huge differences, right, So there's something that's a lot thicker,
has better finishes on it. Some of them actually put
like clear coats on it, like protective coats so it
doesn't fade as much. There's also vinyl siding that comes
built in with UH with insulation on the back of it. Now,
what we know about insulation is that insulation that's on
there is probably not going to do anything for you
in the winter simply because if that if that heat

(05:18):
gets to that insulation, it's already outside your house anyway.
But and I don't know what the R value is,
and I'm not sure the exact specifications, but it will
it should keep your house cooler in the summer, because
it would it would actually slow down the radiant heat
transfer from outside to inside. So also vinyl siding is okay.

(05:42):
So water can get behind most sidings and some sidings,
if water gets behind it, it can be a real problem
because it's not made for water to get behind it.
It doesn't really ventilate. So if certain sidings, if they're
not flashed properly, not done properly, water gets behind there.
You can have some major mold issues with vinyl side.
It's actually made, I mean, water can get behind it.

(06:02):
You've got to you always have to have a good
house wrap underneath it. And it actually has wheep poles
on it, so if water gets behind it, the water
can drip out and air can travel through it so
it can dry. Okay, there's vinyl, and it can be
relatively inexpensive, but can actually, i mean really really make
a home look nice. LP Smart or LP I shouldn't

(06:26):
say LPLP is a brand. They're not paying me for this.
I like that brand. I think it's a great brand
of siding. It's what I specifically have on my home,
and it's a very hard fiber cement type siding. Can
mine actually has what's called a diamond cote on it,
so it's pre painted in the factory has like a
I don't even know, twenty or twenty five year warranty

(06:47):
on the paint. So now that takes a little bit
more of a skilled craftman to install. Are it's not
as forgiving as a vinyl siding. You know vinyl siding,
it's got a lot of nail holes on the top flange,
and a big mistake people make is they nail it
too tight. Oh, with heat and cool houses expanding contracting,

(07:08):
so does your siding. So if you're ever driving past
a new housing development and you see the side of
a home and the siding's all wavy, it's because they
nailed the siding too tight. So as soon as it
expands and contracts, it can't move, so it starts to
bow and ripple and it looks horrible. And the only
way to fix that is to tear it all off
and start over. So it has to have a little gift,
so those nails are never nailed tightly. Fiber cement is

(07:31):
completely different. Again, it's a lot more expensive. It gives
you a more traditional wood look to your siding, but
it's not traditional wood. It's made to last longer, pre
painted in the factory, or at least pre primed in
the factory, so your paint's going to last a lot
a lot longer. But the one thing I will say
with all of these is it's kind of like a

(07:53):
roofing system in that the critical details need to be
done before the siding goes on. Like a good roofing system,
like our Ultimate Roofing Solution, we are doing the important
stuff first, the ice and water, the leak barrier, the
roofed wall flashing, the pipe flashing, the chimney flashing, the crickets,
the ventilation. All of that stuff is done first. Then

(08:15):
we put some nice beautiful shingles on over the top
to protect the important stuff, to protect the stuff that
will keep your home from leaking. Siding is the same way,
and siding needs to be done in a step by
step process where flashings are done around windows, windows are taped,
house wrap goes on. House wrap needs to be overlapped

(08:36):
the correct way. You do it bottom up so the
top layer can overlap. Because water will almost certainly get
behind your siding at some point. That's okay, it's meant
to It's meant to get behind a vinyl or aluminum
or a steel siding, so we have to make sure
those critical details are done properly before we put the

(08:58):
siding on. The siding is like the beautiful frosting on
the cake. Okay, the other stuff it doesn't look so nice,
but it's way more important to the siding are way
more important to the integrity of your home, which is again,
don't do siding. I know a lot about it. I've
done a lot of siding, I've sold siding. There's my opinion.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
It's interesting. It's just sing to talk a little bit
too about siding. And when you point out, Andrew, I
think one of the things that really caught my attention
there was part of that last point is is similar
to what when we talk about roofing is is what
you see is really more visually, is more about visuals
and less about performances. As as as a homeowner, it's

(09:41):
what you don't see often times that makes all the difference.
And I talk about you know, I know one of
the great things with largstom services, whether you're doing roofs,
you're doing roofs or any other type of work on
somebody's houses, you love to have, you know, come out,
get that, get that estimate, that get that home inspection.
Same thing with signing is get that get to have
that conversation going. But also making sure who you work

(10:02):
with has a great reputation as well. Is once that
stuff goes on, you're not going to know you know
how well it was done until gosh forbid, you have
an issue. Working with somebody that you trust in these
areas is really really important, isn't it, Andrew?

Speaker 2 (10:18):
It's extremely important because again it has to be done right. Yeah.
And look, I drive by housing developments all the time,
and this is the stuff I look at. Okay, we've
talked about this before. It is a disease, it's an illness.
I can't get rid of it. I look at gutters, roofing, facia, trim, soffit, siding,

(10:39):
That's what I look at. And I see that waviness
all the time, and I think to myself, a does
that homeowner even notice it? Because some people don't look
at stuff like that. Some people don't have an illness
like I have. Right, they don't look at that type
of stuff, and if they did look at it, they
wouldn't really know what's going on. Anyway. I see it
from a mile away and well that was that was

(11:01):
done by a rookie. Right, that's a rookie mistake. Very simple,
very simple, something very simple to happen. But I will
say this, a lot of people call us and say, hey,
do you do siding. No, you know, we don't do siding.
We do soft in facia, we do gutters, we do rooking,
we do instalation. That's what we try to be experts in.
I think the day might come that we do do siding. Again,

(11:21):
I've done a ton of it. I know a lot
about it. It's relatively easy to do. Just making sure
you do the things, the important details correctly, that's that's
the most important part. But a lot of people think
they need to do new siding to dress their house up.
We do soft and facial work every single week. So

(11:42):
if you're not sure, like, okay, do I hate my
siding or do I hate my trim color. There's so
many houses that were built twenty years ago that were
a beige, A beige house with white trim. Yes, I
mean right, yeah, some sort of gray, some sort of
beige with white trim. We can come and we can
redo the trim part of the house. A lot of
people are going to black black soft and in facia

(12:03):
with black gutters, it's super sharp. Now you take that
same beige siding you had, you put black trim on,
and then you maybe put some black shutters on. I'm
just saying that that is way less intrusive, a lot
less expensive, and we can put some gutter shutter on.
So now your gutters are maintenance free and you would
be amazed at the difference it would make on your

(12:25):
home without tearing all the siding off. Now, if you
do that and it's not enough, you can always do
the siding after that. So we do the soft in
infacia and gutter all the time because our reps say, hey,
you want to do the gutters. Now's a great time
to maybe redo your soft and in facia as well, because
now instead of only being able to look at putting
white gutters on, now we have a whole array of

(12:45):
colors and we can match the soft and in facia
trim to it, and now we can really change the
look of your entire home. So just something to throw.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Out, it's a really great option for folks as well.
As we talk with Andrew Larson from Larsen Home Services,
also by the way. Just just kind of a timely
conversation as well. And Andrew, I think folks need to
think about this is you guys are going year round
as well for people are and I know we're still
in summer, and I certainly don't want to start getting
the winter and fall mentality in people's heads, but the

(13:14):
reality is it will come soon. Folks need to realize.
Lars Home Services, you guys are here for people year round.
Now is the time, though, to start having those conversations
about about having your house looked at, whether you're looking
new roof, you're looking for facia, gutters, all that great stuff.
Andrew and the team love to talk with you. It's
a really great, really great opportunity to learn a little
as well about your home. All I got to do

(13:35):
is give them a call. Six oh eight five three
five forty three forty three. That's six oh eight five
three five four three four to three. The website Larsenhome
Services dot com. That's l A R. S o N
Home Services dot com. Andrew, it's always great chat with
you a Fred. You have a great day. We'll do
it all again super soon.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Talk to you next week.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
News comes your way next right here know Kevin Ham
comes your way next here on thirteen ten WIBA